Christmas Update

It's already December 21st. Three days until Christmas Eve. It's gone fast, don't you think? My kids got out of school on Wednesday for FOR.5.WEEKS. Agggggghhhhhh. But, I'm not going to think about that little bit of information until after Christmas, one day at a time, right?

First off, a couple of thanks-first to my mom for providing my new header photo. It's only taken me 5 months in Brazil to change out my Mexico picture, so you'll probably be looking at a Christmas tree for most of 2008. The photo was taken from our patio; the light up near the top of the photo is the Christ the Redeemer statue under clouds.



And, thanks my great friend "K-squaredsmom" that I knew in Small Town Mexico. She was always so thoughtful while we lived there, always remembering everyone's birthdays and such and she hasn't stopped even though we now live on different continents. She sent this beautiful African (I'm assuming?) tablecloth to the States with her husband earlier this month when he and Gaupo had a meeting there:



I love it!

And now, on to my Christmas report

Just One Loser Activitiy

Last year, one of my very favorite activites was the prefab gingerbread house I found at Costco. It was easy, all-inclusive and fairly easy to clean up after. So, I spent the big bucks and ordered on and had it shipped to Guapo's office in the States.



It all started out fine. First we got the foundation up:



But shortly thereafter things started going very, very wrong:

Until we were left with this sorry excuse of a gingerbread house:



Word to the wise: this is not a project for those of us living in a tropical region.

Winner Activities:

Ornaments. I ordered several different ornament craft kits from Oriental Trading; the idea was for us to work on them together and then for the kids to give them to the kids in their classes. At first I thought it was a big mistake because they all required glue gun usage, and only a couple of my kids can handle that, but we just put everything in a box and worked on it when we had time whilst listening to Christmas music. (ok, I did end up staying up late one night to finish, but they were still pretty cute):

Then we wrapped each kid's ornaments in cellophane and they took them to school the last day:



(BTW: the flying pig??? was the most popular ornament)

Do I want to do this every year? No. But it was fun this year.

Little Christmas Shop:



I explained this project here. We did it last night and I thought it was really fun. The kids did chores all month, then used their "money" to buy presents (that I had previously purchased) for Guapo and me, my mom and each other:



They wrapped and labeled all of their gifts and placed them under the tree. Here's Juan Carlos wrapping:


They all knew what they'd bought for each other in about 4.5 seconds, but it was still a good time.

I think we'll try this again next year.

Christmas Books: Anyone looking for a cute Christmas story? Olivia Helps with Christmas has been my kids' favorite book this year.




Well that's it for now. We're in the final push, so I'm pretty busy. Hope everyone is enjoying the season!